As we navigate February, we bounce between weatherperson's day with cold snaps and snow flurries and chocolate fondue day.
Chocolate fondue is a recent offering in the culinary landscape. Konrad Egli, owner of Chalet Suisse in New York City, created chocolate fondue with chocolate, heavy cream and kirsch. This was in the early 1960s. Such a long gap between chocolate and the earliest published cheese fondue recipe which dates to 1699.
But it took a while for chocolate to become a dessert - it needed the chemists to get involved. They transformed it into a sweet, smooth and creamy texture. That was the mid-1800s.
There are many fondue recipes now - chocolate is one of the most beloved foods.
It took more invention to make chocolate fountains. They became popular in 1991 when they were displayed at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago. The chocolate fountain resembled a stepped cone, standing 2–4 feet tall with a crown at the top and stacked tiers over a basin at the bottom. The basin is heated to keep the chocolate in a liquid state so it can be pulled into a center cylinder then vertically transported to the top of the fountain by an Archimedes screw. From there it flows over the tiers creating a chocolate waterfall in which food items like strawberries or marshmallows can be dipped.
It was in 2004 that Hellman began marketing a fountain for personal use. Chocolate has fluid dynamics that are unusual. "The gravitational forces are much lower than the viscous forces." A small chocolate fountain needs a lot of vegetable oil and the best chocolate - couverture chocolate - which is high in natural cocoa butter.
Who knows about the tallest chocolate fountain? Guinness of course! It is 12.27 meres high, and was recorded in Austria, on April 11 2019. The picture is HERE. The chocolate fountain is at Pralines World - dedicated to the magic, taste, history, and manufacturing of pralines and chocolate and includes the chocolate academy, a knowledge and learning centre.
It is countdown to Valentine's Day - and the theme is the Ringling Circus.
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